


you're always in the right places

by electrumqueen



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-22
Updated: 2011-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-20 15:23:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/214189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/pseuds/electrumqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"I need a favour," Finnick says.</i> A history of Cinna and Finnick, in District Four and in the Capitol.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're always in the right places

**Author's Note:**

> **you're always in the right places**  
>  various permutations of cinna/annie/finnick (+ johanna).  
> 4,308 words. pg-13. mockingjay spoilers, catching fire spoilers, playing fast and loose with cinna's backstory.
> 
> notes: this takes place in the same universe as [and our dreams will break the boundaries of our fears](http://archiveofourown.org/works/113640), just in case you need a little explanation. ty to akemilove and pearlesque for handholding <3

\--  
-74-

"I kind of," Finnick says. "This is uncomfortable, but I."

Cinna tilts his head and looks at Finnick. "What?" he says, clipped, calm.

"I need a favour," Finnick says.

"Horseshit," Cinna says. "You have no business here, Odair."

"We used to be friends," Finnick says, lightly, gently. There is weight all over the words, dragging them down to the ground, to the stains on Cinna's hallway's carpet.

"A long time ago," Cinna retorts, and then, "do I need to shut this door in your face? Because I _will_."

\--

Annie Cresta, all dark hair and sad eyes, is the only thing between them that was never a point of contention.

\--  
-70-

They were children in District Four. Finnick was the gold-haired beautiful _beloved_ son: Cinna was the one who never quite fit in, two years younger.

Annie was Cinna's best friend. She was in love with Finnick, an awkward cautious kitten love. Cinna would never have told her, but.

(He knew what she meant; in a delicate tentative unsubstantial sort of way. Because it was how he loved her.)

\--

At sixteen, delicate and _so fragile_ , Annie is reaped.

He does not remember much of that day; it's kind of a hazy sense of blackness, panic, despair. She is not a Career, he remembers himself thinking.

District Four hasn't sent out someone _not_ a Career in _decades_.

(Even Finnick Odair was a Career, young though he was.)

She brushes a kiss to his cheek and says, _don't worry about me, darling_. But she is crying, which ruins that, a little.

\--  
-74-

"I'm in the rebellion," Finnick says, very very quietly. His breath is at Cinna's ear.

Cinna startles, hand smudging a delicate gorgeous line of paint. "Fuck," he says, "jump off a bridge, Finn. How did you get in?" The canvas isn't ruined, not quite; he frowns, thinking about how to fix it; blue, maybe. He is sort of known for his waves.

"I'm a victor," Finnick says, brightly, "no doors are closed to me. And you called me _Finn_."

"Habit," Cinna says. "I was thinking about something else."

"It's pretty," Finnick says, stepping away from Cinna's shoulder. "The painting. But you probably don't get to do much of that now, do you?"

Cinna rolls his eyes. "I'm not sure out of the two of us, _you_ are the one who gets to criticize _my_ choice of employment."

"I'm pretty sure," Finnick says, tightly, "that you just called me a whore."

Cinna has no earthly idea why he says it; "There's probably no one left in the Capitol who'll call it like it is, right? So maybe I should step in."

Finnick's face twists, ugly. "Yeah," he says, "well. Here's a demonstration." And he leans forward and presses his lips to Cinna's, fierce and burning like fire, and Cinna can only think _we are district four, we are the waves_ ; and then something changes, when Cinna kisses back. "You know I love you," Finn breathes, into Cinna's mouth, like when they used to do this, scared, huddled together close to the television.

Cinna swallows, because for all the things Finnick Odair is, _liar_ isn't one of them, at least not where Cinna is concerned. "Finn," he says, stepping back a little, looking down at the paintbrush in his hand. "What did you need from me?"

\--  
-70-

Annie turns to him, all flat desperate eyes and says forced-lightly, "At least, you know, I get to hang out with him now."

"That's totally why you got your name pulled out," Cinna says; he feels like he is about to cry. "One on one mentoring with Finnick Odair."

"You know me," she laughs, but her voice wavers, unsteady; "I'd do anything to get some smoking hot tail."

"At least he's attractive," Cinna says. He can't do it any more; he pulls her into a hug, tight and strong, like if he holds her long enough he can stop them taking her away.

\--

"I'm Finnick," Finnick Odair says. He is just as beautiful as he has always been on television, but slightly older, and there is more worry in the backs of his lovely eyes.

"I know," Annie says, very softly, "I'm Annie. This is Cinna."

Cinna waves.

(The boy this year is a Career; he has dark hair and large muscles and a low bitter voice, and he is being mentored by Mags, who got Finnick through.

Annie is kind of a last ditch vague hope.)

"Hi," Finnick says, extending his bronze long-fingered hand, "nice to meet you."

\--

The morning before she leaves, they sit at the edge of a cliff and stare at the sea below them; just the two of them, with the dawn casting brightly across her hair and his hands.

She sucks in a shaky breath, slips her hand into his. _I love you,_ she murmurs, tracing the words into the lines on his palms. _I love you so much_.

He kisses her hair and says, _right back at you_.

Her eyes are flat and sparkling and deadly, deep calm. She says, "Don't watch the Games. Don't remember me like I'll be-- remember me like now, please. Remember me _alive_."

He swallows. "I promise," he murmurs.

She smiles at him, lovely and uncomplicated for a moment; no reserve in those eyes, nothing but bravery, something fierce he has never seen before. "Sometimes I think about running away."

"No," he says, "you don't. I know you."

"No," she says. Her smile slips, a little. She stands up and strips out of her shirt, shoes, skirt: just a breastband and a loincloth away from total nudity against the rising sun. "This is my last chance to be alive," she tells him, and slips her hand into his.

When they jump, it is like flying; her smile is so fierce he can forget that the bottom of his stomach is falling out, and that he will never see her again, after this. They break the water and he thinks, for a second, that they could run away together.

(But she hasn't ever thought about it, so he shoves it to the back of his mind and lets the water close over his head, ice cold.)

\--  
-74-

"Have you ever wanted to save the world?" Finnick asks, all sea-eyes, shifting as the light hits them.

"Not really," Cinna says. He puts his paintbrush down, carefully. There is a smudge of gold paint on his fingertips. "But neither have you."

"Now we _can_ ," Finnick says, light but not light enough, because this is jagged-edged Finn, after all. "I need you to become a stylist. For District Twelve."

"You can't-- what the _fuck_ ," Cinna snaps, "you hate the Games." (But, he thinks, Finnick hates the Capitol too; and here Cinna is.)

"There is a girl," Finn tells him, careful, sharp, hope underpinning all the syllables. "She's our mockingjay."

"You can't just," Cinna says, paintbrush flying through the air as he gestures, "you can't just come back into my life and tell me what to do."

Finn's eyes soften; he puts his hand on Cinna's shoulder, warmth seeping through his shirt. "That's not what this is," he says.

"Why don't I believe you?" Cinna asks. The plaintiveness slips through his voice, makes him shake.

"Because you're smart," Finnick says. "Because I fucked up. There's a laundry list but I don't think you want me to be here all day."

Cinna says, "How is she?" His voice is slow, quiet; he has tried to shove her to the back of his mind but not once in four years has it worked.

"Haymitch thinks that we can stop this. Stop it ever happening to anyone else."

Cinna swallows. "You were the one who told me to come here--" _was this,_ he thinks, _part of the scheme of things?_

"It was never a plan," Finnick says, "I swear to god, Cinna."

\--  
-70-

He sits on Finnick's couch and takes a series of deep wracking breaths, heart racing back and forth and back and forth.

Finn sits neatly, cross-legged, in front of him. "Hey," he says. "I think you should come to the Capitol. Not where she can see you, but--"

"Who the fuck dropped you on your head as a child?" Cinna says, because what else is he going to say. "No."

"Cinna--" Finn says, (Cinna does not know when he became _Finn_ , became a _friend,_ someone else trapped in this mess that Annie is in) and then he stops, and drops his eyes to the carpet. "I don't want you to be alone."

"She's my _best friend_ ," Cinna says. "There isn't any way that I'm going to be _okay_ with this."

"You're sixteen," Finnick says, very calm, dead calm, the heart of a hurricane. "Your name is going back in that draw. And they'll pick you, because of her, because it's _drama_. _Come with me_."

"I don't see how that will _help_ ," Cinna says. And then he looks at Finnick, really _looks_ , and sighs, because there is _such sorrow_ in Finn's eyes, and Annie would want Cinna to look out for him. _Quid pro quo_ , she'd say. _He's been there for me._

“Okay," he says, because when Finn says _I don't want you to be alone_ , he means, _don't leave me, they all leave me._ "Okay, I'll go."

\--

Annie says, "Here's the thing." Her fingers twist into each other, fish in a net. Her hair is back in a pretty, functional ponytail. She is wearing mascara. He has never seen her eyelashes this dark, this long; they are like spiders on her face.

Cinna mmms, lightly. He is sketching her, the light on her face, the slope of her nose, the curl of her too-long eyelashes.

"I sort of," she says, hesitating, breathing in. "I keep wanting to kiss him."

Cinna's fingers stay steady, on the charcoal, on the page. He shades the depth of her iris, pupil. "Do it," he says. "Don't-- you should do it, if you want to." Unspoken: _Don't regret anything, before you go in there._

Her eyes are very blue. "Yeah," she says, and pauses, knees tucked up under her, lip worried to shreds. "The thing is-- I think he wants me to. I think he cares about me. And-- I don't want it to be worse, for him. When I go."

"Fuck," Cinna says, because he can't not, because he _loves her_ and she is _going to die_ and he hates, more than anything, that this is something she knows, something she has accepted, something inevitable like the sea. (He hates, really, that it is true. That it will destroy Finnick Odair, Finnick with the smile; Finn who Annie always loved, who Cinna loves too, a little bit.) "Annie--"

She closes her eyes, like she's praying, or a statue.

He puts the charcoal down, puts his arm around her fragile bird-boned trembling self. "It doesn't matter," he says. "You know what you want. You know what you need." He bites his lip: it is already the twin of hers; he barely notices the blood anymore. "I'll keep an eye on him-- if you don't come back." He thinks: _come back._

\--  
-74-

"It was never a plan," Finnick says, gently, carefully. "Cinna. It was just something that happened." He leans over Cinna's shoulder, long and elegant. He doesn't smell like perfume, or the overbearing salt they sometimes sprinkle on him. His fingers trace through the wet gold paint on Cinna's palette, gold sticking in the whorls of his fingers.

Cinna twists his face away from Finnick's, away from the weight of his eyes. ( _Hey Finn,_ he remembers saying, _you should smile more_. He remembers staring into Finnick's eyes because they were so full of _everything_ , a world Cinna had only ever seen on t.v.)

There's a moment, a hitch in Finnick's breath, a ripple in the air as Finnick distorts even the tiny nominal distance between them; and then Finnick's fingers are damp on the back of Cinna's wrist, tracing patterns over and over again, heavy and hot and _there,_ ever present, not leaving, _so_ steady. They might be words, but Cinna isn't sure.

He can't breathe, frozen, still, staring at his canvas, nowhere near Finnick's barely-trembling hands. He does not believe Finnick, not really; but he feels anchored here, with Finnick, and that is something he has not felt for a long time.

"Hey," Finnick says. "I'm sorry." His warmth is radiating through Cinna's shirt; the paint is sticking firmly to Cinna's skin.

Cinna remembers Annie Cresta, her sharp smile, her wide eyes. He looks down.  
 _  
You were my love story,_ says Cinna's wrist.

"I couldn't let them take you," Finnick says, so sweet, so calm. "You were mine. You were the only thing they hadn't touched."

It is such a singularly _Finn_ thing to say; it catches Cinna in the ribs, in the chest, underneath his heart. There are many things he could say, to this. Instead he dips his fingers in the paint, and writes on the inside of Finnick's slightly-pale forearm: _I know._

\--  
-70-

He doesn't watch the Games: Annie was right, he doesn't want to see her die. He loves her too much. (It is so strange, knowing they are in the same city but that he couldn't see her, couldn't press his lips to her forehead and murmur _it's going to be okay, Annie._ )

Finnick does. He sits in front of the television and doesn't move, not even to sleep.

For the preliminaries it's a lot calmer than Cinna thought it would be; he guesses because he is only seeing Finn, and Finn just provides colour and commentary and entertains a dark-haired man with flat black eyes who disappears into his room late at night and scares the shit out of Cinna, so that Cinna avoids him whenever possible. Finn treats him like he's fragile; Cinna is pretty sure he is projecting, since Annie is about to go into the arena.

The morning of the initial bloodbath, Finnick says, _she made it_ and pulls Cinna into a hug so tight Cinna can barely breathe. _She's okay._  
 _  
For now_ , Cinna thinks, breathless even in his thoughts: but there is nothing in him; only the joy.

\--

"Hey," Finnick says, too calm, "Annie is a good swimmer, right?" _  
_  
Cinna's heart can't stop beating, too fast. "What?" he asks.

"Don't freak out," Finnick says, hand on Cinna's shoulder, hot like fire, "the arena flooded."

Cinna shakes free, bolts loose, does not stop running. His lungs are burning.

Finn catches up to him at the roof, tugging him into the circle of his arms. He kisses Cinna's forehead, holds him tight as Cinna shakes apart.

"She can swim," Cinna whispers, urgent, like if he doesn't say it won't be true. "She can swim." The solid insistence in his voice rings false, even to him.

Finnick smoothes Cinna's hair away from his brow. "Breathe in," he murmurs. "I've got you."

"You don't have _her_ ," Cinna says, throat sticky with tears and raw from the screaming.

"I know." Finnick's eyes are deep and infinitely sad. "Believe me, I know." When he kisses Cinna, he tastes like salt; Cinna can only think about the sea.

\--  
-74-

Cinna sighs. "How's Annie?" he asks. It's a pointless question. He sees her on television, a shaking dark-haired broken thing, a girl he loved once upon a time and left to Finnick's arms. But he wants to hear it from _Finnick_ , wants to hear Finnick's voice against her name.

"She's--" Finnick stops, breathes. His skin is bronze against Cinna's; his hand is on Cinna's wrist. He says, "Annie is--" His eyes meet Cinna's, pleading.

Cinna could end this, but he doesn't look away.

Finnick's breath is shaky, shuddery. "She's not so great, Cinna."

"No," Cinna says. "I didn't expect she would be. Does she recognize you, these days?" (This was designed to cut; Cinna has gotten good with a knife, these days, but probably not as good as Finnick.)

" _Cinna,_ " Finnick says; despite himself Cinna can really only, right now, think of him as _Finn_ , desperate with his chest scraped open, heart bare at the distance-honed knife Cinna is wielding against him, now.

"Okay," Cinna says, because he always changes the channel when she is on television, because he promised to remember his smiling girl in the sea. "Okay. Why Twelve?"

Finnick's smile is not a real thing, it's too sharp, glassy; beautiful and deadly like the trident he won when he was fourteen. "They're coal, Cin," he says. "Think about what you could do with _that_."

 _So now you trust me,_ Cinna thinks. _Now that I'm useful._ But there is fire dancing in his mind, fire licking up the clothes of a boy and a girl with their hands held fast together.

This is, he thinks, nowhere near as beautiful as the waves in Annie's eyes.

\--  
-70-

The last day of the Games, Finnick comes back to the apartment with gold-edged, red-stamped papers that say Cinna's name, say he was born in the Capitol and he is a stylist-in-training.

"You like to paint," Finn says, hesitant, defensive. His mouth tasted sweet, just before; mulled wine, something with aniseed. "Annie says." _Said._

The papers are thick and heavy in Cinna's fingers. "What the fuck, Finnick." there is still adrenaline surging through his veins, _joy_ because Annie Cresta is still alive, Annie Cresta is _coming home_. Annie Cresta is _swimming_ and she is _going to be okay_.

"You can't--" Finnick's voice shakes. "I told her I'd keep you safe. Annie was-- there was a point they made, with her. They'll make it with you, too, if you go back."

Cinna breathes out. He's sixteen, but he knows who he is and it's bound up in the waves against the shore, the sharp cliffs and sandy beaches and sea-salt smell of District Four. There is no Cinna without the crash crash crash of the sea. "Fuck you."

Finnick winces, _flinches_. " _Cinna_."

"Can you just--" Cinna sighs, feeling brittle like dried-out driftwood. "Can't you just worry about Annie? _She_ 's your job, not me."

Finn leans in, kisses his forehead. His lips are dry against Cinna's skin. "Oh, Cinna," he murmurs, "you know that's not true." But he lets it rest.

\--

Everything falls apart with the sound of the one cannon, Annie's opponent, crashing through the flooded arena and through Cinna's ears as he sits on the floor in front of Finnick's tv, arms wrapped around his knees.

(It is somehow wrong that Finn isn't here, but he is a _mentor_ , there are places he has to be, a ceremony of which Cinna is not a part. Of this, he is glad.)

He stares, transfixed, as the hovercraft scoops Annie's frail, limp body out of the water. Her hair is sodden; all of her is soaked through.

He wonders if she is cold. Her hair is streaming down, dark and dripping brown against the blueblue _blue_ of the sky.

\--

Finnick sends him a message: last year's victor, a girl from seven with sharp, sharp eyes and a slinky dark green dress. "Hey," she says, unlocking Finnick's door with smooth familiarity. "Cinna, right? C'mon, we gotta go."

"What?" Cinna is saying that a lot, these days. "I have to-- my friend is coming back."

"You don't understand," she says. "Grace period's up, mentoring's over. You need to be out of here _now--_ there are going to be people, soon. Finn's got meetings practically every hour of every day."

She catches his eyes, steady, and then grabs his wrist. Her fingers are much gentler than they have to be. "It's _okay,_ " she says. "He gave me the papers."

He is in shock. His muscles don't know how to work. He wants _Finn,_ he wants Finn's arms around him, solid; he wants Annie and her sharp sweet smile; he does not want _this_ , this solid built immovable city. He wants the sea.

He says, "How can I trust you?" but he does, because she called Finnick _Finn_.

\--  
-74-

Finnick says, " _Cinna_."

Cinna stares at him, at the curve of his mouth and the line of his shoulders. They are on the roof, where the air is thick and slightly smoggy because Cinna does not want to live in the good part of town; he wants to always remember that this is not where he is from no matter what the fuck his papers say. If he looks down, over the edge, he can see the rows of garbage cans and the manholes for the Avoxes.

Finnick looks beautiful, here. He looks beautiful everywhere. Cinna wonders if there is anything that can mute him and knows there is; Finnick, here, now, is a faded overexposed print of _Finn_ , smiling with his eyes in District Four, back when Cinna was young.

Cinna says, "If I kiss you will you come right?"

Finnick looks sad, infinite. He reaches out and pushes Cinna's hair back, away from his forehead. "I'm a victor of the Hunger Games," he says. "There's no coming back from that."

"You forget," Cinna says, thoughtful. "You were a victor when I met you."

\--  
-70-

Johanna's apartment is messier than Finnick's; smaller a little, with curtains over the windows and fans in all the rooms that turn on incredibly loud.

She says, "Annie Cresta isn't okay," and Cinna wants to snap, "of course she's not fucking okay," but that would be counterproductive. "Finn says she broke, during the Games."

Cinna can't breathe. He is seeing her in the water, at home, with her smile brighter than the light off the waves, with her eyelashes dripping just a little and her fingertips tracing the ripples of the tide, in and out and in again. "I have to see her," he says, unreasonable, irrational, heart beating too fast, one of these days it's going to bruise itself against his ribcage.

Johanna's hand is on his shoulder and the weight of it feels like the world, the heat of it feels like a brand. "I'm sorry," she says. "You have to go to school. Finn's right-- if you see her they'll hurt you. You don't want to know what he did to get you this, to get you safe."

Cinna thinks: _I never asked you for this._ He doesn't speak. His mouth tastes like salt.

He misses the sea.

\--  
-74-

Finnick is tracing his fingertips along the dried paint of Cnna's canvases, lined in a neat row along the wall of the room that is his studio. "These are beautiful," he says.

"Does she remember me?" Cinna asks, watching him, steady. The static to Finnick's kinetic, shore to Finnick's sea.

"Yeah," Finnick says, softly. "I'm sorry."

"You could have let me see her."

"No, I couldn't." Finnick's voice is solid, sure; cracking a little, but steady. (That is Finnick, for you.)

"No," Cinna agrees, because he's angry, has always been angry, but he is not delusional. "I dreamed about her, about you. I spent all this time missing you, Finn. You should have trusted me."

"I always did," Finnick says, "God, Cinna. There is a difference between trust and telling you all the things it would hurt you to hear. There is a difference between trust and pulling you even further into this mess I've made of things."

"Annie was a lesson to you," Cinna says, because he has spent four years thinking it over and over again, thinking it until everything hurt, until everything was grey and grey and _grey,_ not even a splash of blue. "And I would have been, too. But you--

Finnick's teeth are white, painfully brilliantly so. "I called in some favours."

Cinna softens his voice, because there is this part of him that has missed Finn even with all there is between them. "Thank you."

This time, Finnick's mouth is gentle, careful, sweet.

\--  
-71-

For his first major project at the art school in which he does not belong, Cinna paints a boy and girl in the sea, wreaths of seaweed tangled through their hair and around their throats. They are holding hands, floating; their eyes are closed.

He titles it _childhood/impermanence_. It wins awards, is exhibited in a gallery.

Finnick is there at the presentation, on the arm of a silver-haired woman with violet cats' eyes. he says, "It's beautiful," and, "Congratulations." His eyes are wide, guileless, but Cinna knows he could look closer if he wanted, see Annie, see District Four, see the world.

By now Cinna knows how the world works. "No," he says. "Thank _you_ , Mr. Odair."

\--  
-74-

When Katniss wins, Finnick is not part of the ceremony. Cinna brushes Katniss' hair out of her eyes and says, _good job, kiddo._ Even though she is unconscious he thinks the flicker of her eyelashes means she is pleased, happy to be near him.

He hopes she will come out of this better than Annie did.

(He hopes he will deal better with this than Finnick did.)

\--  
-75-

Under cover of a night sky and a gathering of deadly bees, Katniss murmurs, "They got Cinna. Right before they took me."

Finnick breathes in, too sharp. "Damn them to _hell,_ " he says, and his voice is too low, too intense.

Johanna Mason smirks, elegant and dangerous and also _broken_ , and she murmurs, "Why do you think we're here? If they throw enough of us down they think they won't get there."

Katniss thinks about the depth of the pain in Finnick's eyes, veiled as it is: there is something _personal_ about it, something private and removed. But she is worried about Peeta, about the Games, about the mockingjay pin she can still feel on her shoulder.

She takes a breath, and lets it go.

\--


End file.
